


Two Immortal Humans and a Plastic Man

by iAmYou



Series: The Plastic Centurion [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Spoilers for Episode: s07e05 The Angels Take Manhattan, minor spoilers for Last of the Time Lords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:40:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1888761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iAmYou/pseuds/iAmYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack doesn't pretend to understand.<br/>He understands perfectly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Immortal Humans and a Plastic Man

**Author's Note:**

> Well, whoo! The longest one-shot I've written so far, and it's still rather short.  
> And sort of dark, but so are pretty much all the stories I've written.  
> I now have a tumblr, it's iamyou-doctorwho.tumblr.com

"Rory Williams," Rose says one day. "Born early nineties, maybe late eighties. Touched by a weeping angel, lived in New York the rest of his life with his wife Amy."

"Is he important?" Jack asks as nicely as he can. Rose nods and sits next to him on the bench. It's not the nicest place to live, even temporarily, but let the youngsters have comfort. He doesn't deserve it.

"The Doctor's companion. In an aborted timeline, he was the Centurion."

"I've heard legends," Jack says. "The two thousand year old soldier, forever protecting the box of Pandora and whatever it held."

"It was his wife." Jack can understand the tone of her voice. It's the tone he gets when he mentions Ianto, even after all these years. It's the tone they both get when they hear about the Doctor. (They never mention him, they only acknowledge him when he appears in the news somewhere.) Rose loved this centurion, and Jack does not feel jealous. His ring may be on her finger now, but they both have a past. Rose might even have a future. Will probably have a future.

"I should meet him," Jack suggests with a hint of his old self bleeding into his smile.

"Why I brought it up, actually. I ran into him a century or so. He said he met you once. No mention of me, you'll have to see him alone. I'll take you to him if you want."

"Okay." Jack kisses her, and the conversation is lost.

 

"I should get surgery," Jack decides. "I look old."

"You physically age about a year every century, I think. You look young."

"I'm two thousand. That's twenty years older than I looked when we met."

"So you look forty, fifty. Big deal." And Jack realizes his mistake. The one thing Rose can't do is change. Age. Have kids. Move on.

No, not that last one. She could, in theory, move on. So could he. They don't because remembering hurts, but the things they've both done... they deserve pain. The only thing that would hurt more is forgetting all the good people they've met, but immortality doesn't make them selfless. Or masochists, not completely at least.

"Talk to me when you look eighty, then you can get surgery."

 

Amy leaves for the bathroom. Right when she walks away, an older man slides into her seat. He's several years older than Rory, maybe. All these years after the Doctor and aliens still seem to appear on their doorstep. So who really knows his age.

"Rory Williams." The man pauses for only a second before continuing. "Jack Harkness. Rose mentioned me?"

"She said she thought I should meet you," Rory agrees. "Why now of all times?"

"Seems a good time." Jack shrugs and steals a fry- _chip_ from Rory's basket. "How's life?"

"Good. Weird at first, for Amy, staying in a time that's not ours. She got used to it."

"You already are," Jack says. Rory nods. "The curse of us."

"What?"

"I'm two thousand years old, I'll live to be a lot older."

"She said you'd understand." Rory looks Jack in the eye and sees pain. Rory might be almost as old as the man in front of him, but Jack has seen and done things much worse than Rory hopes he ever has to.

Jack wonders what to say. He had a few questions, but Rory isn't what he expected him to be.

"The people you met, the friends you made and the people you killed, how often do you think of them?" he asks eventually. Rory wonders how he knew about the deaths, but maybe Rose told him about him being a centurion. Or maybe Jack can see it in Rory's eyes.

"Every day. More than that, every minute. It's always in my mind." Rory thinks of his army years, all of the days fighting he collected over the two millennia.

"What sticks out more?" Rory tilts his head in confusion. "What do you remember more, killing or saving?"

"Killing," Rory says automatically, throat tightening. Jack nods and frowns.

"Same. Especially the innocent deaths." He stands. "Nice seeing you, Williams." Jack walks off into the ladies restroom, for some reason not garnering any attention. He passes Amy, who doesn't even blink.

"There was a woman in there who knew you," she says. "Some Rose Tyler, told me she didn't have time to talk, but wanted to say hi. So, hi."

 

Jack takes off the perception filter once he and Rose reappear in their home. He only had it on so people wouldn't notice what he and Rory were talking about, should they be listening.

"How'd it go?"

"Well, I guess."

The next day, Jack hands her a photo he took with a tiny camera from the 47th century. She stares at it for a few seconds before crumpling it up. When she asks for it later that night, he hands the the second copy silently.

She may have only known the man for a few decades, but Jack knows it could've only been a few minutes and she'd mourn. There are people Jack had only known for that long, and he mourned their deaths even a thousand years later.

 

"This surgery even comes with telepathic abilities!" He says. They're both in a happier mood today for a reason he can't explain and doesn't care to look into.

"I like it," Rose says. Jack looks at the design, wonders what being a large head would be like, and decides to put it off a few decades.

 

Death offers relief, and Jack feels sorry for Rose that she cannot feel that even briefly like he can.

 

Sleep does not. Rose calls out in her sleep.  _Mum. Dad. John. Doctor._ Her children's names appear too, adopted or not they were still her kids, with too-human DNA. _Donna, Adric, Mickey_ (he assumes she's referring to her son, the actual Mickey Smith he knows she can visit). Even his name sometimes.

Jack doesn't want to know how many names he says.

 

Billions of years pass. Rose sticks with him. He knows eventually these years will be nothing to her. They make friends. They lose friends. They watch life go on and Jack realizes again how lucky he is to see it all.

"You know what I wanna do?" Jack says, well, thinks, one day.

"What?" Rose turns from the book she was reading to look at him.

"It sounds awful, but I think I wanna see the Earth explode." Rose grins. "What do you say?"

"I think it's an excellent idea." she pauses. "I can't go, though."

 

"The Doctor is visiting tomorrow," Rose tells him. She has her perception filter on so she can come and go, unnoticed by the cat nuns. "There's something you've gotta tell him."

 

Martha and the Doctor leave. Jack forces himself to come back, one last time. Rose appears.

"I love you," she says quietly. He can't find the ability to respond, but she nods like she knows what he wants to tell her. "I said to myself, a while back, that I loved Rory because he stayed when no one else did. You stayed even longer, and I'll love you longer than anyone."

 

She could bring him back, young. She doesn't. This time, her act of kindness is letting him die.


End file.
